Leading Voice to Parliament campaigner’s epic Australian Story
Image credit: Olivia Rousset
Amid the spreading of misinformation and outright lies surrounding the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Uluru Dialogues Co-Chair Professor Megan Davis has offered a statement of defiance and hope.
“You can’t go into law reform thinking you’re not going to win; thinking that you’re not going to get it – otherwise, what’s the point?” she recently declared on “A Voice from the Heart”, an ABC Australian Story episode by Olivia Rousset, Susan Chenery and Greg Hassall.
Six years ago Prof. Davis was the first person to read aloud the Statement from the Heart - an invitation to the Australian people - following the National Constitutional Convention at Uluru. In 2023 she has faith Aussies will ultimately vote to recognise Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia’s Constitution for the first time.
Professor Davis and her beloved mum Dawn discuss the issues of the world at Dawn's home in Eagleby in southeast Queensland. (Image credit: Olivia Rousset)
“We want Australians to approach this reform with their head; it’s the Constitution, it’s important, but it’s also about the heart,” the Co-Chair of the Uluru Dialogues told Australian Story.
“I feel optimistic and hopeful that Australians will listen to what we have to say.”
A Cobble Cobble woman who grew up in Hervey Bay in Queensland before her mother relocated with her five children to the southern Brisbane suburb of Eagleby in the mid-1980s, Prof. Davis said politicians are affecting the lives of Indigenous Australians in the same ways as when she was growing up.
“What mum had trained our eye acutely to was the impact decisions had on us, the underclass - the decisions that were made in Canberra and which were announced on federal budget nights and at election time - and the acute impact those decisions had on our lives,” she said.
The pursuit of Constitutional Recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders has been a long and arduous one. There have been seven government processes and 10 reports so far on the issue. Prof. Davis has been involved in the movement since Julia Gillard’s Prime Ministership.
“There is still no mention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian Constitution,” Prof. Davis, Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous at UNSW and a Professor of Law told Australian Story.
Magistrate and close friend Louise Taylor said the hints Prof. Davis would be a candidate to take up the fight for Constitutional Recognition had been clear for a long time.
Behind the scenes during filming for "A Voice from the Heart" for ABC's Australian Story. (Image credit: Olivia Rousset)
“She can look at the document that ignores our very existence and identify that document as an opportunity for redemption for the country, really, and as a way for us to have a say in our future,” Magistrate Taylor said.
The Voice to Parliament is proposed to be an advisory body. It’s about being able to speak to the people who make laws and policies that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives. It is what First Nations people said they wanted when they were asked about Constitutional Recognition directly.
“We ran 12 regional dialogues, which each ran over the course of three days, right across the country,” Prof. Davis shared with Australian Story.
“We wanted to have a yarn about all the different options, about the situation we find ourselves in. No one had gone out to communities and asked them ‘What does meaningful Constitutional recognition look like to you and your community?’ before.
“Their answer wasn’t a symbolic piece of recognition; people wanted something tactile, something that would make a difference, something empowering. That’s where the Voice concept came from.”
Adds Aunty Pat Anderson AO, Co-Chair of the Uluru Dialogues: “People wanted change; real, serious structural reform. Everything that had been tried in the past had been done away with - with the stroke of a pen.
“Out of that process came the Uluru Statement from the Heart. That’s the answer given to the government in response to their question - what does recognition look like to you?”
Image credit: Olivia Rousset
Winning a referendum in Australia means obtaining a yes vote from the majority of people in the majority of states. The outcome will be just as important - if not more - to First Nations as the historic 1967 yes result, according to Noel Pearson, Founder of the Cape York Institute.
“The 1967 referendum only merely removed the discrimination against our citizenship, but the Voice is about our rightful place as Indigenous people, and that’s why it needs to be in the Constitution,” he told Australian Story.
Prof. Davis is certainly not expecting the importance of an occasion like this to ever be lost on Aussies as the referendum draws closer.
“It’s a big deal, going to a referendum – a really big deal. This reform really matters. It really matters to the nation.”
